Expert Says

Young children are most commonly affected with neuroblastoma, a sympathetic nervous system tumour. Every year, this diagnosis is given to 25 children in the Netherlands. Surgery to remove the tumour tissue is a crucial part of the treatment plan. Dutch children with solid tumours, including neuroblastoma, have being treated at the Princess Maxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht since November 2014. Researchers from the Princess Maxima Center examined the medical files of 244 kids who underwent surgery in the five previous paediatric cancer centres in the Netherlands between 1998 and 2014 to examine the impact of consolidating surgery for kids with neuroblastoma.

These numbers were contrasted with those of the 111 kids who underwent surgery at the Princess Maxima Center between 2014 and 2021. The study, which was partially supported by KiKa, was written up in the European Journal of Surgical Oncology.

The process took an average of two hours and forty-five minutes, an hour and forty-five minutes less than previously, according to the researchers, who observed that surgeries required 40% less time following the concentration of care. The amount of blood lost during the procedure was also significantly decreased, going from an average of 450 millilitres to just 50 millilitres.

The researchers discovered that while there were some adverse effects in the first month following surgery, they were less severe. Prior to the focus on surgery, there were more common postoperative side effects that necessitated repeat surgery, some of which were potentially fatal.

Additionally, the researchers discovered little evidence for an improvement in the survival rates of children who underwent neuroblastoma surgery, but more studies are required to demonstrate this difference with greater certainty. The Princess Maxima Center for Pediatric Oncology’s paediatric oncology surgeon and group head, Prof. Dr. Marc Wijnen, oversaw the study.

He says, “With this analysis, we show concrete results of bringing together all care and research for children with cancer. Less damage was done to the healthy tissue during the operation, resulting in fewer complications for the child.”

“As a general rule, the more experience a surgeon has, the better the results. The outcome of the investigation did not surprise me. It shows that we can now offer children with cancer the best possible treatment.”

The Princess Maxima Center for paediatric oncology’s medical director and co-founder, Prof. Dr. Rob Pieters, also contributed to the study.

He says, “Our main starting point when establishing a single national research hospital for childhood cancer was that as a parent you want the very best care for your child. What we already knew from practice, we now see expressed in numbers: by treating a rare disease more often, doctors become increasingly better at that treatment. And that leads to better outcomes for our children.”

“In this study, we focus on the outcomes of surgery in children with neuroblastoma. I expect that now – almost five years after the opening of the Princess Maxima Center – the benefits of concentrated care and research will become clear for more and more forms of childhood cancer.”

Many kids go to childcare facilities that are far from their homes during some of their most formative years. They need a welcoming, healthy environment with stimulating conversation and interaction while they are there. This is dependent on the childcare facility’s acoustics.

Kenton Hummel of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln discussed how soundscape research in daycares might enhance the results and experiences for children and staff in his talk at the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

“Few studies have rigorously examined the indoor sound quality of child care centres,” said Hummel. “The scarcity of research may deprive providers and engineers of providing the highest quality of care possible. This study aims to better understand the sound environment of child care centres to pave the way toward better child care.”

The investigation’s objective is to comprehend how humans and noise interact. High noise levels and extended durations of loud fluctuating noises can have a detrimental effect on kids and employees by making communication more difficult. On the other hand, meaningful conversation is made possible by reduced background noise, which is crucial for the growth of language, the brain, the cognitive system, and social and emotional abilities.

Hummel is a participant at Erica Ryherd’s UNL Soundscape Lab. To monitor three daycare facilities for 48 hours, their team worked with professionals in engineering, sensing, early child care, and health. The sound in the workplace was also evaluated by the personnel. They then utilised machine learning to define the auditory environment and identify the variables that affect the experience for the youngster and the caregiver.

“Recent work in offices, hospitals, and schools has utilized machine learning to understand their respective environments in a way that goes beyond typical acoustic analyses,” said Hummel. “This work utilizes similar machine learning techniques to build and expand on that work.”

While many parents and guardians are concerned that their children are spending too much time on mobile devices, video games, and social media, a Michigan State University study has explained why they need not be concerned.
Keith Hampton, a professor in the Department of Media and Information and the Quello Center’s head of academic research, asserts that he is more concerned about disconnected teens than he is about screen usage. “Teens who are detached from today’s technology are more separated from their classmates,” Hampton explained. “Many young people are dealing with mental health issues.”

While teens frequently struggle with concerns of self-esteem relating to body image, friends, family, and school, disconnection is a far more serious hazard than screen time. Social media and video games are strongly embedded in adolescent culture, and they serve more than one purpose. They assist children in socialising, contribute to identity formation, and serve as a conduit for social support.”
Hampton and his colleagues investigate disconnection. The majority of youngsters have regular access to the internet. These youngsters feel detached only when they opt to reduce their device use or when their parents intervene to limit their online time.
A large number of youngsters, mostly in rural America, are alienated for entirely different reasons. They live in houses with extremely poor broadband infrastructure.

These kids usually lack internet connection outside of school, have very slow access at home, or have irregular data coverage on cellphones.
“If we want insight into the mental health of teenagers who have no choice but to be isolated from screens, rural youths are the only surviving natural control group,” Hampton said.
In a peer-reviewed paper based on a survey of 3,258 rural adolescents, Hampton and his colleagues compared the self-esteem and social activities of teens with no or limited home internet access to teens who are the heaviest screen users as well as teens whose parents strictly monitor or limit their screen use. This is what they found out.

Being a girl was the single most important predictor of poor self-esteem. This was not surprising given how stressful adolescence can be for young females. Poor academic performance was the second most important factor in influencing self-esteem in both males and females.
Teens with little internet connection at home and those whose parents exerted the most control over their media usage had much lower self-esteem than ordinary girls or students who fared badly in school, but only marginally.
The amount of time teens spend on screens, whether watching movies, playing games, or using social media, had no effect on their self-esteem.

Even those who used screens “excessively” reported better self-esteem than those who were unplugged owing to a lack of internet access or severe parental control of their online activity.
Why? Because media is so strongly embedded in young culture.
“Isolation occurs from being away from those kinds of entertainment and interaction that pervade kids’ lives,” Hampton explained. “For most teenagers, it’s social networking, video games, and uploading internet videos. It is frequently how teenagers obtain information, interact, and share.”
This is not to say that teens do not interact with one another. Teenagers who spend more time on social media and watching videos spend more time socialising.

While this study was conducted before to the COVID-19 epidemic, it highlights the horrific toll taken by rural adolescents who were disconnected during the pandemic, as well as the critical need to fix gaps in rural broadband infrastructure.”
According to Hampton, this does not imply that social networking sites are beneficial. Online bullying and algorithms that direct youngsters to potentially harmful content endanger their mental health. Furthermore, some youths are more vulnerable to harm than others.
However, this study shows that when parents communicate to their children about the hazards of media use, focus on teaching them critical media literacy, and offer them greater control over their media use, their children report higher self-esteem.

“I urge parents to take an interest in what their teenagers are doing online and spend time with them rather than focusing on how much time they spend on screens,” Hampton added.

According to a small study published today in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association, teens with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) who took bromocriptine, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease and Type 2 diabetes, had lower blood pressure and less stiff arteries after one month of treatment compared to those who did not take the medication.

Heart disease is facilitated by stiff arteries and high blood pressure. T1D patients have a higher chance of getting heart disease than people without the illness since they have a chronic, lifelong condition where their pancreas doesn’t generate enough insulin to manage blood sugar levels.

Children who are diagnosed with T1D are significantly more at risk for heart disease than adults who are. Therefore, scientists are looking for strategies to delay the onset of vascular damage in kids with T1D.

“We know that abnormalities in the large vessels around the heart, the aorta and its primary branches, begin to develop in early childhood in people with Type 1 diabetes,” said lead study author Michal Schafer, Ph.D., a researcher and fourth-year medical student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado. “We found that bromocriptine has the potential to slow down the development of those abnormalities and decrease the risk for cardiovascular disease in this population.”

This study was carried out by a multidisciplinary team to investigate the effects of bromocriptine and a placebo on blood pressure and aortic stiffness in Type 1 diabetic adolescents. The drug bromocriptine belongs to the group of drugs known as dopamine receptor agonists. It raises dopamine levels in the brain, which enhances the body’s receptivity to insulin, also known as insulin sensitivity. Due to its impact on insulin sensitivity, bromocriptine has been FDA-approved since 2009 to treat people with Type 2 diabetes.

34 individuals (13 men and 21 women) with Type 1 diabetes who were 12 to 21 years old and whose HbA1c (glycosylated haemoglobin, a marker of blood glucose) was 12% or below participated in the study. When the HbA1c is 6.5% or greater, diabetes is present. One group of 17 received bromocriptine quick-release treatment, while the other received a placebo once daily. They were randomly split into two groups of 17. There were two phases to the study’s execution. In phase 1, participants received the initial therapy or a placebo for 4 weeks. After a 4-week “wash-out” period without treatment, participants received the opposite treatment for 4 weeks in phase 2.

Each participant acted as their own control for comparison in this “crossover” approach.
At the beginning of the trial and at the conclusion of each phase, blood pressure and aortic stiffness were assessed. Aortic stiffness was assessed using cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the major arteries and a measurement of the pulse wave velocity of the blood pressure pulse.

The research revealed that bromocriptine dramatically lowered blood pressure when compared to a placebo. At the conclusion of 4 weeks of treatment, bromocriptine medication typically reduced systolic blood pressure by 5 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure by 2 mm Hg. Bromocriptine treatment also decreased aortic stiffness.

The ascending aorta showed the greatest improvement in aortic stiffness, with a decrease in pulse wave velocity of roughly 0.4 m/s and an increase in distensibility, or elasticity, of 8%. Bromocriptine was linked to a 5% increase in distensibility and a 0.2 m/s decrease in pulse wave velocity in the thoraco-abdominal aorta. “A stiff aorta predisposes a patient to other health issues, such as organ dysfunction or atherosclerosis and higher stress or strain on cardiac muscle,” Schafer said. “We were able to take it a notch further and show, using more sophisticated metrics, that these central large arteries are impaired, and impairment among adolescents and young adults with Type 1 diabetes may be decelerated with this drug.”

Monsoon is a fun and refreshing time for everyone, especially kids. After a long scorching summer, the cool breeze and the rains feels like a treat to us. Many children often like getting wet in the rain and that really can be a lot of fun for them. However, apart from the good things, the sudden change in the weather can bring all sorts of germs and bacteria that cause infections and diseases. Here are some foods for kids that they should eat and avoid during rainy season:

Foods that boost the child’s immunity during rainy season

Following are some foods that parents should try to include in their kids’ diet so that his/her immune system becomes strong enough to fight off diseases:

1. Garlic: Garlic is rich in anti-oxidants that help in boosting immunity and aso in regulating their body’s mechanism.
2. Turmeric: Turmeric is a superfood having anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal and anti-viral properties. That is why turmeric is a must have during rainy seasons.
3. Green vegetables: Green vegetables are rich in nutrients and are very healthy to eat during rainy season, They build up the immunity systems of the kids and help them fight off infections.
4. Seasonal fruits: It is very important to eat season fruits during rainy season. They are packed with a number of nutrients and also help the children to fight off any disease or infection.
5. Dal: Dal is rich in proteins which are very much essential for kids during raining season. It gives a lot of energy and keep the immunity system of the kids strong and healthy.
6. Soups: Hot soups give a lot of warmth and comfort during rainy season, that is very much needed. Soups are one of the best things to make your children drink during rainy season.
7. Dry fruits, nuts and seeds: These are the best option for tea time snacks for kids. Cashews, walnuts and almonds help a lot during rainy season.
8. Beetroot: Beetroot contains numerous amounts if vitamins, folic acids, minerals and potassium. It is very healthy and detoxifies the body. Kids may experience a lot of stamina after having beetroot.
9. Kadha: Making your kids drink kadha in rainy season will ensure that their immunity system is boosted and they are very well able to fight off infections and diseases.

Foods that children should avoid during rainy season

Following are some foods that parents should strictly not add to their kids’ diet as they may weaken the immunity system and make their children prone to infections and diseases:

1. Oily and fried food: Fried foods are not very healthy to eat during rainy season as they slow down the process of digestion.
2. Ice creams: Ice creams are among kids’ favourites but they can cause much harm during rainy season. Kids may get infected and catch cough and cold after having ice creams or ice lollies.
3. Fish: It is better to avoid fish or any other sea food during rainy season as fish breed during this time so it may affect their quality and taste.
4. Mangoes: Mangoes if eaten in rainy season can cause acne, skin problems and digestive problems. The risk increases if a child already has digestive or skin problems.
5. Curd: Due to its cooling properties, curd is better not to have in rainy season. Having curd makes you prone to diseases and catching cold.
6. Soft drinks: Soft drinks reduce the number of minerals that are present in their body. This leads to a reduction in enzyme activities. This means that soft drinks will make your kids’ digestive system weak and they may easily get sick.
7. Street food: Street food is one of the main reasons why children get ill during the rainy season. Chances of contamination are very high in the food that is sold on the streets. Therefore, it is very important to say a strict no to pani puris, bhel puris, momos, etc. Also, avoid eating out at restaurants as much as possible.